IN 



BisAOP JOHM H. VlNCPMT 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
LW/^ . 

Slielf.^lL7. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A STUDY IN PEDAGOGY, 



A STUDY L\ PEDAGOGY 



FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT PROFESSIONAL 
TEACHERS. 



3Y ^ 

BISHOP JOHX H. VIXCEXT. 







I <^ 



NEW YORK : 
WILBUR B. K E T C H A M, 

13 COOPER UNION. 



\", • 



l.b^1 



Copyright, 1890, 
By WILBUR B. KETCHAM. 



A FORE-LOOK. 



Leaders and People must be in Sympathy, 9 ; The 
People's Clamor To-day, 9, 10 ; All Classes Need Educa- 
tion, 10; Charles Kingsley's Theory, 11; This not a 
Scientific Treatise, 1 1 ; A Word of Help for " The Peo- 
ple," 12; The People and the Public Schools, 12; Edu- 
cation Defined as an Art and as a Science, 12 ; The Four 
Subjects to be Discussed, 13 ; The Art of Education, 14 ; 
Education of Plants, 14; of Animals, 15; Difference 
between the Education of Plants and Animals and of a 
Boy, 17 ; The Education of the Will, 18 ; Education 
Empirical and Scientific, 19; The Element of Freedom in 
Education, 20; "Look Steadily — Once," 22; Scolding 
Pupils for Inattention, 24; Certain Important Laws, 24; 
Teachers and Methods, 25 ; The Educating Instinct, 25 ; 
The Ancient Pedagogue, 26 ; His Faults, 27. 

Mother as Teacher, 27 ; Everybody Teaches, 28 ; 
Emerson on Society as a School, 29; The "Special 
Agencies " in Education, 29 ; The Picture of the Ship 
that made Sailors, 30 ; Pictures as Lessons, 32 ; Shams 

[3] 



A Fore-Look. 



in Art, 33 ; Teaching Power of the School-house, 33 ; of 
Dress, 34 ; of Slang, 34 ; The Street as a School, 35 ; Picto- 
rial Lessons, 36 ; The Daily Papers, 38. 

Special Educational Agencies — The Church, 40 ; Edu- 
cation and Faith, 41 ; Mysteries in Religion, 42 ; True 
Religious Faith, 45; Soul Value, 46; Matthew Arnold 
and " Conduct," 46 ; Tyndall and the German Soldiers, 
46 ; The False Church Ideas, 47 ; Children and the 
Church, 47 ; The Pastor, 48 ; The Roman Catholic Pre- 
tence, 49 ; The Secret of Romish Fear of the Public 
Schools, 52 ; Formal Religious Recognitions in the Day 
School Unnecessary, 52 ; Home as a School, 53 ; Laws of 
Teaching — Desire, 54; Resolve, 55; Definiteness and 
Accuracy, 55; Moral Conviction, 55; Philanthropic In- 
tent, 56 ; Expression, 57. 

On Helping Public School Children to get their Les- 
sons, 57 ; How to Create an Interest in Knowledge, 58 ; 
Huxley on Examinations, 58; The True Work of the 
School, 59; the Press, 60; Books, 61. 

The Choice of a Home with Educational Intent, 64 ; 
What may be done in a Crowded City, 65 ; Village Im- 
provement, d'j ; Home Culture, 68 ; Letting Children 
Alone, 71; The Local Village Congress for Discussing 
Educational Topics, 72. 



BEFORE BEGINNING. 



Before beginning this practical little tractate 
— a word of forecast ! 

Every man and woman in this Nation should 
have what Montesquieu commends : " The desire 
lo augment the excellence of our nature and to 
render an intelligent being more intelligent." 

Out of this desire must spring every true 
effort to promote education. And if the desire 
be intense and steady, and if the effort be guided 
by wisdom, keen and comprehensive, we shall 
have as a result a true philosophy working out 
in true methods. 

But the people at large must know this phi- 
losophy, and work it out on a large scale. Thus 
the true education will come to be the " popular 
education " which our reformers talk about so 
much in these latter days. 

[5] 



Before Begin^zing. 



If the people are to be won to these thoughts 
they must be talked to in a plain and frank way. 
Fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, 
brothers, sisters, servants, preachers, clerks, 
editors, merchants, school-teachers, bill-posters, 
and news boys — a multitude — who help in never 
so slight a way to make public sentiment, must 
be stirred to wise desire and then set at work 
to put wise desire into wise endeavor. 

Concerning the ''desire " Montesquieu speaks 
of and the "effort" it must beget, and the "wis- 
dom " to be consulted, and the " ways " so mani- 
fold to be employed, and the "multitude" of 
teachers, professional and non-professional, to be 
enlisted — all for the promotion of " popular 
education" — it has been the purpose of the 
author to write in the following pages ; and so 
to write as that some indifferent parents and 
other people may see what a great work is before 
them, and seeing may approve and perform. 

This great end is the author's aim — at least so 
mur^h of the end as he may be permitted to com- 
pass. His thoughts are not new and they may 
not reach many readers ; but he hopes that some- 
how, through this and through the efforts of 



Before Begin^iing. 



others, many people may be helped into keener 
conviction and firmer purpose as to the best 
education and the means of furthering it. 

John H. Vincent. 
Buffalo, N. V. 



A Study in Pedagogy. 



A recent lecturer on educational topics in the 
University of Jena said, "The nationality of the 
Greeks declined from the moment when the philo- 
sophically cultivated separated themselves from 
the mass of the people." Whatever may have 
been the case, or the necessities of the case, with 
the Greeks, it goes without saying, that in a 
republic like our own, those who are known as 
the thinking men — philosophers, and those who 
are known as working men — merchants and 
mechanics, must keep in close proximity, breath- 
ing the same free air, rejoicing in the same clear 
light, seeking the same high ends, and giving 
mutual help. 

We live in a day of popular uprisings. The 
people demand a hearing from the influential 

[9] 



lo A Shidy m Pedagogy. 

classes, the leaders of men who have insight, 
comprehensive knowledge, financial resources, 
and who for these or other reasons hold respon- 
sible civil and social positions. The people when 
they speak, have a right to be heard ; and those 
who by good fortune, by the wise use of natural 
talent, or by providential assignment, hold places 
of power are bound to heed the call of the peo- 
ple ; to sympathize with and to help them, that 
the oppressed and neglected mass may not be 
compelled to cry in Pascal's words of protest 
spoken in their behalf, against the arrogant 
philosophers of his day, "Ye pass for the salt of 
the earth ; wherewith do ye salt our lives ?" 

Whatever hope may come from capital and 
legislation, the best help that philosophy can 
give to labor is — philosophy. What the so-called 
"lower classes ' need is what the scholars of the 
highest have — education ; for it is true educcition 
that puts the individual at his best, increasing his 
ability for service of every honorable Und, 
teaching him to know himself, of what qualitv he 
is, and what are his adaptations ; exalting his 
standards of life, giving him compensations for 
misfortune, inspiring companionship in solitude 



A Study in Pedagogy. 1 1 

useful occupation during enforced leisure, and 
augmenting his worth as a member of the fam- 
ily, the church, and the nation. "If I had my 
way," said Charles Kingsley, " I would give the 
same education to the child of the collier and to 
the child of the king." In the same spirit and 
with similar motive would I put the means of 
education, the power of self-education, and the 
ability to educate, within reach of the people, 
and especially of parents whose opinions, max- 
ims, and habits of every-day life have so large an 
influence in determining the estimate which their 
children are to place on education, and in direct- 
ing the education which is of necessity, to begin 
so long before professional teachers have access 
to the subjects of it. 

It is my purpose, in the following pages, to 
discuss the general subject of education, both as a 
science and an art. I use the term " Pedagogy" 
for a reason which will in due time appear ; but 
I wish at the outset to disclaim any intention of 
treating the topic in a formal or scientific way. 
Nor do I aim at the instruction of those who 
are or who expect to be professional teachers. I 
write solely for the helping of the people — the 



12 A Study in Pedagogy. 

people whose children these professional instruct- 
ors are expected to teach ; the people whose 
interest and co-operation in education are indis- 
pensable to the success of teachers and pupils ; 
the people who may themselves, long after their 
own school period is ended, continue to acquire 
knowledge and to cultivate tact in imparting 
knowledge ; the people who are to settle not 
only the financial support and social standing of 
the pedagogical profession, but whose counsels 
and votes are to determine, and that in the near 
future, the fate of our public school system. 
Will my professional and scientific readers, 
kindly remember the simple, unpretentious, and 
practical aim I have thus so fully and frankly 
avowed in advance ? 

The art of education is the selection, applica- 
tion, and regulation of the conditions and of the 
special agencies which act upon human nature in 
the development of personal and social charac- 
ter. 

The science of education is a systematized 
knowledge of human nature, with a view to the 
understanding and use of the conditions and 



A Study in Pedagogy. 1 3 

special agencies which operate in the develop- 
ment of personal and social character. 

In pursuance of this line of definition, it is 
my purpose to consider, — 

I. The nature and Aims of true Education. 
II. The Conditions which affect Education. 

III. The special Educating Agencies. 

IV, The Selection and Control of these Con- 
ditions and Agencies. 

True personal and social development is the 
end of education. It is as Ruskin says "The 
leading of human souls to what is best, and 
making what is best out of them." The law of 
growth is the law of life. The growth of the 
soul begins with the growth of the body, and 
continues indefinitely. Sometimes physical re- 
straints limit the intellectual powers, dwarf the 
moral, and render the executive impotent. Ok. 
the other hand, we often find that with failing 
physical energies, the intellectual and spiritual 
seem to be augmented. Whatever the mysteri- 
ous relations and interdependence of soul and 
body, education is the development of the indi- 
vidual to the end that he may secure a true char- 
acter, and be able to use his varied powers ; that 



14 A Sttidy in Pedagogy. 

thus he may be prepared for his personal and 
social responsibilities as a child of the Eternal 
Father, as a member of the great human family, 
as a citizen of this world, and as a being endowed 
with immortality. Education embraces the cul- 
ture of the man, — physical, intellectual, esthetic, 
moral, and religious, and the improvement as 
well, of those executive powers by which he is 
enabled to express himself in art, in language, 
and in conduct. 

We are not without examples of educating 
zeal and activity in this world. We have watched 
the putting of human care and wisdom into a 
plant. To what extent one may see by watching 
a shrub, vegetable, or tree left to itself, and one 
of the same character at the beginning, upon 
which the thought, wisdom, and labor of its 
owner are expended. He selects the best place 
and the most favorable conditions. He enriches 
the soil, digs about and waters the plant, watches 
its peculiarities, clips and trims, shields it from 
horses and cattle, protects it from parasites, and 
in every way that science and experience suggest 
works into the natural forces and conditions 
which promote its growth the added elements of 



A Study in Pedagogy. 1 5 



human wisdom and labor. There is a difference 
in the outcome between the plant neglected, and 
the plant protected and educated. This human 
help may turn unpalatable and unwholesome 
fruit into fruit marketable and valuable. Thus 
man helps nature by educating it. 

The same power of education is illustrated in 
the animal kingdom. Wild animals are subdued 
and taught by man. The breed is improved. 
Habits are formed by utilizing the power of 
instinct. The results in this line are remark- 
able. Every girl who has petted a kitten, every 
boy who owns a dog, will readily appreciate this 
susceptibility to education in the domestic ani- 
mals. We have seen trained horses whose per- 
formances seemed like the work of the higher 
intelligence. We have seen dogs whose move- 
ments were so wise and skillful as to elicit roars 
of laughter and rounds of applause. We have 
watched the " learned pig " pick out letters, spell 
names, select figures, and combine them in arith- 
metical results. We have put on our spectacles 
to follow the operations of "educated fleas," 
who seem to understand and deliberately to obey 
the commands of their trainer. They pulled 



1 6 A Study 171 Pedagogy. 

threads which ran over pulleys, took their places 
as horses in front of a liliputian chariot, marched 
in procession, carried burdens, and seemed to 
imitate human actions as though the)' were im- 
pelled by an intelligent purpose. 

The students of zoology find many insoluble 
problems when they inquire into these phenom- 
ena. The degree of intelligence in the brute 
creation, the presence of volition and of moral 
quality, are open questions. The limits of in- 
stinct are not comprehended. It is, however, 
certain that much of the action of so-called 
"educated" animals is the intelligence not of 
the animals but of those who control them, and 
that certain movements which seem to be the 
result of thought and intention are wholly unin- 
telligible to the brute himself. Given motions 
of a stick in the keeper's hand cause the pig on 
exhibition to pick up certain letters and figures. 
We wonder at the intelligence he displays. But 
the intelligence is chiefly that of the exhibitor. 
The whole thing is a pleasant trick, and the edu- 
cation involved is not so very remarkable. There 
is, however, an education of animals by which 



A Study in Pedagogy. 1 7 

they are rendered more useful to man, and there- 
fore more valuable in the market. 

The directing power in vegetable and animal 
education comes from without. Rose-bushes 
and peach-trees become finer in quality of flower 
and fruit by a force of will in their cultivators, 
but not in themselves. The dog learns his tricks, 
not from a will-power of his own, but from that 
of his trainer. He seems to be responsible for 
failure, and we strike him. He does well, and 
we pet and praise him. We know, however, that 
he is not really blameworthy nor praiseworthy. 
If we do smite it is to associate pain with certain 
action that he may be kept from repeating that 
action. We give him pleasure when his move- 
ment is according to our intention or desire. 
But the source and center of the whole move- 
ment is in man the rational, and not in Fido, the 
animal being. 

The education of a boy is a different process. 
He has, to be sure, a physical and an animal na- 
ture, and there are conditions of soil, surround- 
ings, instinct, and habit which are to be studied 
very much as we consult these things in training 
plants and animals. But if we train a boy only 



A Study in Pedagogy. 



as we train a dog or an elephant, we shall not 
have an educated boy. The noblest part of him, 
which is his power of self-direction, will have 
been neglected. The tree is at its best what we 
make it. The horse is what we make it. But 
the boy at his best is what he makes himself. 
The flower cannot decide what form, color, and 
odor it will have. The boy is to decide for him- 
self what aims, spirit, and habits are to control 
his life. 

True education is the education of the will. 
It strengthens a weak will ; makes stable a fickle 
will ; provides knowledge that one may have 
wisdom in the use of his will ; and gives practice 
in self-direction and control that one may have 
a ready, steady, strong, and unflinching will. 
Too much of our boasted education is that of the 
vegetable and the animal. We must educate 
rational beings to think, choose, and act in a 
rational way. All this indicates that education 
comes through forces operating both from with- 
out and from within ; and that it is promoted by 
certain conditions and by the operation of cer- 
tain and special agencies. It is the work of the 
teacher to select, apply, and regulate these con- 



A Study in Pedagogy. 19 



ditions and agencies, and to secure on the part 
of his pupils freedom, entliusiasm, a voluntary 
surrender to wholesome influences, and a perse- 
vering self-activity in acquisition and expression. 
Much educational work is empirical. It aims 
at art without science. It experiments with the 
intellect before it has studied the laws of the 
intellect. The basis of true education is science 
—the science of mind and of method. There 
must be a careful observation of mental and 
moral phenomena, and then a theory of soul-life 
which serves as a key to such phenomena. Ob- 
servations may be partial and the theory by 
which they are judged may be false or inadequate, 
but the process itself— observation and hypothe- 
ses—is the only one on which the true science 
of education can be finally founded and framed. 
It is obvious that there are many difficulties 
in the way of a sure educational philosophy. 
The human soul is to most men terra incognita. 
They are not accustomed to observe and explore 
it. We are familiar with matter. We keep our 
thoughts on things outside of ourselves. Tan- 
gible and visible facts are obtrusive. The sun is 
bright and the earth solid ; we see and feel both 



20 A Study hi Pedagogy. 

every day. Habits of self-introspection and 
reflection are not common. We become ac- 
quainted with the inner world chiefly through 
its outward forms and activities. Just here we 
are met by the scientific materialist (a few sci- 
entific men are materialists), who plausibly ex- 
plains the mental phenomena on the theory of 
materialism. He tells you that mind depends 
entirely on the brain, its size, weight, and the 
quality of its tissue. He laughs to scorn the 
idea of independent, immaterial, spiritual exist- 
ence. Then come the philosophers who do 
believe in an immortal, separate, spiritual per- 
sonality, but who differ and discuss among 
themselves as to the genesis and relations of 
mental phenomena. The average man may not 
be perplexed by these diversities of opinion, but 
they more or less embarrass the search after the 
basal principles on which to build a science of 
mental growth and improvement. 

The complication is increased by one impor- 
tant fact. The soul being a free personality is 
subject to forces which belong to its own mys- 
terious realm of moral being and which are 
beyond human ken and control. What a drop 



A Study in Pedagogy. 1 1 

of water or a grain of saltpeter will do under 
the pressure of given forces or in special condi- 
tions, the scientist can foreknow and foretell. 
The instincts of a bird may be counted upon 
with a degree of certainty, but who can predict 
the voluntary and personal movements of a 
human soul ? Here science finds her limitation 
and can only speculate concerning the most 
radical and important actions of man. 

There are, however, outside of this unexplored 
and mysterious center of the most mysterious 
life with which we have to do, certain well- 
established facts and laws which render at least 
a tentative science of education possible. There 
are many mental and moral operations which 
we may discover, investigate, and under certain 
circumstances, to some extent influence. We 
may reach and inform and inspire a human soul. 

In the process by which a knowing mind 
becomes to another a helping mind, we find the 
art of education. The science begets the art. 
There are wise ways of winning attention and of 
awakening a soul to self-activity in observation, 
and in concentrated and continuous effort. 
There are ways of holding up before a soul 



2 2 A Study in Pedagogy. 

splendid ideals and inciting to resolve upon their 
attainment, and to put resolve into patient and 
untiring pursuit. These wise ways are the ways 
of teaching. The result is education. 

Manifold are the methods by which mind 
may quicken mind to think and to act. It may 
be done by incidental statement, and as in a 
conversation. Some wise men can teach you by 
making you talk most of the time, they dropping 
a strong seed-thought only now and then. Mind 
may be inspired by formal and systematic an- 
nouncement as in a lecture or sermon ; or the 
result may be secured by instructional direction 
as in the methods of the class-room. But the 
great problem is, How to win for a time, that we 
may stimulate and guarantee for all time, inter- 
ested attention. 

To a restless, rollicking girl in an astronomical 
observatory the professor said, " Look steadily — 
once." She had tried, two or three times — tried 
in her way — to look, "but could see nothing! 
How foolish to stick your head into that !" And 
then she turned away with a silly, bantering 
laugh. She was a frivolous girl who cared no 
more for Saturn or Jupiter than about the Caro- 



A Study in Pedagogy, 



line Islands imbroglio or the United States sur- 
veys in Northern Alaska. She wanted to leave. 
" Let's go," she said, " and do something lively. 
This is stupid." 

" Come, Hetty," said the professor, " try 
again. Look steadily — once." Adjusting her 
eye to the glass and holding still long enough to 
" look steadily — once," she suddenly exclaimed, 
'' O how lovely ! How wonderful ! See the 
rings ! How beautiful ! Let me stay I " After 
that it was hard work to get her away from the 
instrument and the tower. She wanted " to see 
more." And she saw more — another planet, a 
fragment of nebula here, then there, now a fixed 
star, now the delicate lines of the new moon. 
Space, color, splendor, passed before her aston- 
ished vision. 

"I'm coming again. May I, professor ? I'm 
going to read about it ! Isn't it all wonderful !" 

Not a frivolous speech fell from her lips on 
her way home that night. Glancing now and 
then toward the starry vault, she often exclaimed 
" Isn't it too wonderful for anything !" She had 
"looked steadily — once." 

Many of our young people are flippant, and 



24 A. Study in Pedagogy. 

to our more mature judgments foolish, because 
they have never been trained to "look steadily — 
once " at some fact or field in science or literature. 
One look transforms them. They suddenly see 
a new world. Old delights lose their charm in 
the presence of the new revelation. 

If instead of scolding such students for their 
levity we were to bring them face to face with 
som.e mystery in nature or some treasure in 
literature, or best of all some blessed reality in 
religion, and bid them "look steadily — once," 
we should demonstrate again the law of " the 
expulsive power of a new affection." 

It is therefore clear, and cannot be too often 
reiterated, that in order to the best results in 
the work of teaching, the action of teacher and 
pupil must be reciprocal. The full mind of the 
one must be met by the ready and receptive 
mind of the other. Truth to be effective must 
be taken as well as given. Indeed, it can scarcely 
be considered as given until it is taken. 

Whatever the method employed, the teacher 
must observe the laws of accuracy, careful analy- 
sis, condensation, simplicity, and illustration ; 
guiding his pupils in the acquisition of truth on 



A Study in Pedagogy. 25 



their own account, and inciting them to continue 
their researches in the line, but beyond the 
limits, of his teaching, and always aiming to 
have them make a wise, practical, and personal 
application to the truth apprehended. A writer 
has well said: "The more you can render 
teachers independent of any set method, the 
more you can emancipate them from the bondage 
of form and bestow upon them the liberty of 
the Spirit, the better work they will do." 

He who most prizes the science of teaching 
and who most carefully studies the subjects 
which it embraces, will be likely to do the best 
work. But I must not forget that there are men 
and women who seem to possess a sort of edu- 
cating instinct. They have tact as a natural 
gift. They follow, without seeming to know 
that they are doing so, all the best suggestions 
of the profoundest pedagogical philosophy. 
They are not empirics, but men of genius, hap- 
pily adjusted to the world in which they live, 
receiving as by inheritance what other men win 
only after intense study and protracted experi- 
ence. The success of such exceptions should 



2 6 A Study in Pedagogy. 

not allow us to depreciate the preparation which 
is to the vast majority of teachers indispensable. 

I use in the title of this little volume a term 
which, although not euphonious, and the pro- 
nunciation of which has not yet been agreed 
upon by English speaking educators, is very 
significant. In Greece and in Rome, it was em- 
ployed to describe the slave whose business it 
was to take charge of the child at home and to 
accompany him to school. He was of the child^ 
the leader. This child-leader was much more 
than an ordinary slave. He was to some consid- 
erable degree an educated man. It was his 
business to train the boy in the rudiments 
of knowledge, until he was seven years of age. 
He taught reading, writing, and numbers. After 
that this J>aidagogos for ten years or more accom- 
panied his pupil to the school, serving as his pro- 
tector on the way to and from the school and 
probably as his monitor and helper there. 

The word " pedagogue " has not always been 
used in the best and worthiest sense in literature. 
It is not hard to find how a touch of contempt 
came into the title. The habit of teaching chil- 
dren is likely to engender certain unfortunate 



A Shidy in Pedagogy. 27 



habits. The pedagogue was accustomed to rule 
and thus became dictatorial. He looked con- 
stantly with a critical eye on the deportment, 
recitations, and casual expressions of his scholars. 
He became observant and hypercritical every- 
where. He was an authority on so many mat- 
ters. His word was a finality. He was egotist- 
ical and dogmatic. Moving in a little round of 
thought, reiterating his professional criticisms 
and decisions on small and elementary subjects, 
he was dwarfed as a thinker and a man. Mean- 
while the larger world of real life, of mature 
thought, and advanced literature remained a 
sealed book to him, and it is little wonder that 
he became ridiculous in the eyes of wide- 
awake, progressive, and busy people, because of 
his imperiousness, egotism, pedantry, and 
diminutiveness. 

The day of the despised pedagogue is over. 
The office of teaching is ranked among the 
learned professions. Both Wordsworth and 
Agassiz were glad to be known as "Teachers." 

Professional teachers are not the only teach- 
ers. Mothers teach their children, but how very 
soon do children teach their mothers. The si- 



2 8 A Study in Pedagogy. 

lent chamber where the newborn babe lies, cling- 
ing to the new-made mother's breast, is a school- 
room for her, where without an articulate sound 
lessons are given and received, which a wise 
mother never forgets. What an illuminated text- 
book is baby's face through all the earliest years ! 
How the lessons in it lay hold of intellect and 
heart, of imagination and memory ! A great 
school for mother is the nursery. The first four 
years of her baby's life have more power in them 
than the four years of a college course could 
have. 

The diversity of mental and executive endow- 
ment together with the universal law of inter- 
dependence guarantees the interchange of knowl- 
edge for mutual restraint and improvement. 
There are teachers everywhere. Whether one 
will or not, he must teach. There are teachers 
at home, and in every part of the home. Some- 
times the most powerful teachers are servants of 
the lowest order in kitchens and in cellars. They 
give lessons that smolder for years, and that 
later on flash out in fierce and lurid flames. 
Wise mothers watch their servants lest the child 
be weakened and corrupted as to his moral na- 



A Study in Pedagogy. 29 



ture by those whose particular business it is to 
feed and build up the physical. 

" Society," says Emerson, "is a Pestalozzian 
school ; all are teachers and pupils in turn." 
Everybody teaches. Merchants, mechanics, 
bankers, farmers, loungers on the street — all 
teach. The work of education goes on contin- 
ually in field and shop and street as really as in 
nursery and kindergarten. Mind is perpetually 
open to receive impressions. It does not close 
its gate- ways to the outside world when the jan- 
itor locks the school-house door in the afternoon. 
While the light flashes through the atmosphere, 
while the optic nerve is sensitive enough to re- 
ceive images from the all-surrounding world, — 
lessons are being given and received ; and when 
the books are closed and the tired teacher has 
gone home, the pupils are still at school and the 
teaching work is continued. 

In my definition of education I assign an im- 
portant part to " the conditions . . . which oper- 
ate in the development of personal and social 
character." I distinguish between "conditions" 
and " special agencies." By " special agencies " 
I mean those persons, methods, and appliances 



30 A Study in Pedagogy. 

employed voluntarily with the direct object of 
teaching, such as the professional teacher, the 
school, and the book. By " conditions " I desig- 
nate those circumstances and states in which we 
live, and under the influence of which we come 
or are brought, whether voluntarily or not on our 
part, or on the part of others. The "special 
agencies " may be used or they may be neglected ; 
but the "conditions," although they may and 
should be watched, " selected, applied, and reg- 
ulated," are always in operation. They carry 
more than "a bare, majority " in the count of 
forces that educate. 

A story is told of a mother who was filled with 
trouble because her fourth and youngest son 
announced that he was going to sea. She 
had already given up three boys to this adven- 
turous life. She clung to the fourth, hoping that 
he would be spared to her home and companion- 
ship. But, alas, he went the way of the others. 
She tried to account for it. She had always 
warned her boys against the sea and the sailor's 
life. She had read to them stories of storm and 
shipwreck, thinking in this way to intimidate 
them. But in boyhood they played at ship life ; 



A Study in Pedagogy. 3 1 

they drew pictures of ships ; they made and 
sailed miniature ships ; they were wild to see 
ships ; and first of all the oldest ran away that 
he might serve before the mast, and then the 
second secured reluctant parental consent that 
he might not go clandestinely. The third entered 
the navy, and now the broken-hearted mother 
found the fourth bound to embark on a mer- 
chant-ship. In her trouble she sent for her min- 
ister and laid the case before him. " It is too late 
now to prevent it," she said, " but how can you 
account for this singular freak of the whole fam- 
ily of boys ? It is not an inherited taste. It is 
in direct opposition to all my teachings and 
warnings." The minister pointed out to the sad 
woman a large and remarkably fine picture of a 
ship in full sail, hanging in the best light on the 
wall of the " living room," 'v\ which they were at 
the time seated. 

" How long have you had that picture ?" he 
asked. 

"For twenty-five years," she replied. "It 
was the gift of a foreign friend and is considered 
an unusually good painting. We prize it high- 
ly." 



32 A Study in Pedagogy. 

The minister answered, " That picture has 
sent your sons to sea. They have looked at it 
and admired it from childhood. It is, indeed, a 
superior picture. Watch the life and motion in 
that water. See the pride and stateliness with 
which that high prow faces and defies the break- 
ing wave. Look at the sails, the clouds, the blue 
sky beyond the rifts, the movement, the power 
in the picture. No wonder that your boys were 
captured by it, their tastes formed and their 
lives controlled by that rare bit of art." 

I cannot vouch for the literal truth of this story, 
but I can answer for its fidelity to human nature. 
Pictures educate. Inartistic pictures that violate 
every canon of taste, every law of color, and 
every line of truth, corrupt the tastes of those 
who look at them from day to day. Weakness 
and silliness expressed in a foolish picture tend 
to produce their kind. Thus pictures true to 
finest art refine ; pictures of heroism and virtue 
ennoble ; and thus also the portraits of our 
ancestors tend to increase or diminish family 
and personal self-respect. Thus drapery, furni- 
ture, carpets, wood-work, articles of vertu and 
bric-a-brac, have a tendency to refine or other- 



A Study in Pedagogy. 33 



wise. Sham makes children familiar with sham. 
And familiarity with sham of any kind weakens 
the sense of truth. There is power in this par- 
ticular in the architecture of a town. Public 
halls, church interiors, city parks, buildings that 
are of costly or carved stone in front and that on 
the hidden sides and in the rear are of brick or 
uncut stone, — these all give unsyllabled lessons 
concerning truth and falsehood, which are 
weightier than sermons about morality or the 
tasks from books on ethics in the high school. I 
never see a church with imposing facade, and 
with " cheap " side and rear walls, that I do not 
as a Christian have a sense of mortification. 

Again, the school-house teaches as effectually 
as the school-teacher. There are some school- 
rooms where it would be impossible for the most 
skillful art-teacher to give lessons in proportion, 
color, and tone, or for a sensible school-mistress 
to talk about neatness, cleanliness, and taste in 
the keeping and the furnishing of a house. 

Conditions are not sufficiently appreciated by 
those who seem most earnest in the advocacy of 
popular education. Therefore, this emphasis in 
dealing with the people whose children are to be 



34 ^ Study in Pedagogy. 

educated. I commend to you the school-teacher 
who cares for atmospheres, impressions, and tone, 
quite as much as for text-books, tasks, and accur- 
acy in recitation. I ask you to help him when 
he tries to make his school-room a place of neat- 
ness and brightness, with plants, flowers, pictures, 
statuettes, window and wall hangings, and what- 
ever beside may give a child ideas of taste, of 
purity, of restfulness, and which will fill his soul 
with images and memories to go with him to the 
end of life, a source of inspiration and a safe- 
guard against evil. 

Dress and manners have teaching power. 
Slovenly habits and tawdry garments corrupt the 
tastes of children. Coarseness begets coarseness. 
Here is a mother who has a high keyed, strong, 
and ungoverned voice. She employs extrava- 
gant expressions, prides herself in the use of slang 
and takes delight in defying the usages of good 
society. What wonder that her daughter grows 
up to the same indelicacy and uncouthness, and 
to aggravate an already aggravated evil, glories 
in what is really her shame. Bishop Huntington 
says, "A beautiful form is better than a beauti- 



A Study in Pedagogy. 3 5 

ful face, but a beautiful behavior is better than 
a beautiful form." 

None but true ladies and gentlemen should 
ever be employed as teachers. Boards of in- 
struction should require of all candidates, that 
they be polite, neat, gentle as well as accurate in 
speech, and competent to teach by manners, 
tones of voice, and personal character as really 
as by direct class instruction. 

The streets of every town and village teach. 
The town council may not have this fact in mind, 
but it is nevertheless a fact. Mother does not 
think of it. She kisses her young daughter 
"good morning" as the innocent and frolicsome 
thing starts down the street. The school is a 
good one. The teachers are of the best that 
judgment and money could select and secure. 
Mother's parting embrace implies what she does 
not express in so many words : " Good-bye for 
the morning, my child ! How dear you are to 
us ! And how innocent ! What good care we 
take of you in the selection of school and 
teachers ! How sure we are of your security 
and of good teaching for the next three hours ! 
Good-bye, my darling !" 



36 A Study in Pedagogy. 

But mother has not thought of the school on 
the way to school ; of the lessons on the way 
there ; of the lessons on the way back ; of the 
lessons at recess. What lessons ! And what 
teachers ! Of all these father and mother take 
no account. Education, they have been taught to 
think of as a matter of teachers and of tasks, of 
books and of hours. They have not given much 
thought to the teaching power of the school- 
house itself ; nor have they thought at all of the 
street-lessons. Alas for the girls and for the 
boys, because of the street-school ! 

The pictures that are placed in the show- 
windows of book-shops and art rooms, that hang 
at news-stands and on walls and other advertis- 
ing spaces produce impressions that are as 
lessons imparted and received. They are mute 
indeed. No voice is heard while they teach. 
But they speak as no tones or articulations of 
the human voice can speak. They hold close 
attention. They rivet eyes and thought. They 
out-teach the best professional teachers. They 
may undo in five minutes some other teacher's 
work of an hour or a day. They hold their 
pupils still — so still. The jolly, skipping girl has 



A Study in Pedagogy. 37 



been arrested by them. Watch her beautiful 
eyes, and that fixed gaze ! Wonderful girl — 
what possibilities are in thee ! What power 
abides in the picture that can capture thus, this 
bit of incarnate loveliness. She leaves their 
presence, perhaps reluctantly, but carries away 
with her, lines, colors, shadings, attitudes ; and 
these again awaken in her mind older or indis- 
tinct impressions, give a meaning to some hints 
she never before fully understood ; move upon 
her feelings, and start ideas and impulses which 
most effectually sweep away all the best words 
of the morning's lesson in school. Happy for 
her, if the kiss of welcome on her return at noon, 
finds as clean a young life as kissed a good-bye 
at the gate three hours before. 

By the public street exhibition of pictures, 
low standards of character are presented to 
children, already dragged far enough down by 
the ordinary home and play-ground life. They 
are drawn to the picture. They look and think. 
They look again and go away to remember and 
— to think. Here are pictures which present the 
church or religion in some unfair or ridiculous 
light. They commend to favor senseless hilarity, 



38 A Study 171 Pedagogy. 

profanity, vulgarity, or disrespect for parents. 
They represent nude or semi-nude women, the 
favorites of the theatre or the marvels of the cir- 
cus — standing on running horses, leaping into 
the air from bar to bar — hardening every girl 
who looks with interest on them, and often kin- 
dling in boys the beginnings of a passion, which 
ends in foul thoughts and often in deeds of 
secret and of deadly sin. 

Dare I speak of the lewd and bestial pictures, 
the coarse rhymes, the inexpressibly filthy jokes 
which are drawn or written by brutes, on walls 
of secluded places to which the purest children 
must go, and where are sometimes given the 
first lessons in a whole chapter of sin ? Dare I 
speak of the close alliances formed by young 
girls, without mother's knowledge, in which 
innocence is inoculated with dangerous informa- 
tion and fires are kindled which burn for years 
and leave more than ashes ? 

The daily papers of the times are a great 
educating agency — for good and for evil. Both 
results come even to those who themselves never 
read ; for the periodical press produces a great 
body of oral utterance and influence, of general 



A Study in Pedagogy. 39 

information overheard, of gossip about people 
and things, about lawsuits and criminals, which 
affects even those who never read. Father may 
not take the daily of this city or that, be- 
cause he does not want his sons and daughters 
to read the vile reports of some great criminal 
suit. But before ten o'clock every morning his 
sons and daughters have had all the worst of the 
story from those who heard it from others. The 
press publishes, and far away from the reach of 
paper or pamphlet "a little bird telleth the 
whole tale." 

Thus do shop-windows, fences, news-stands, 
school-houses, young companionships, and the 
oral echoes of the press teach. And the lessons 
are free and fascinating. They constitute " con- 
ditions " in which lies a power educational, a 
power little understood by parents or professional 
instructors. 

We prolong life and grow by the food we eat 
at stated times and in formal and conventional 
ways. But it is not only by the processes of 
table-life that we live and grow. There are 
beside our meals, the air we breathe every 
moment, sunlight, sleep, clothing, and the artifi- 



40 A Study in Pedagogy. 

cial heating of the atmosphere which we keep up. 
After the same manner are we educated, not by 
specific acts of appointed teachers, but by every 
hour we live, by every breath we draw, by every 
object we see, by every word we hear, and by the 
intellectual, moral, social, yea, even the physical 
atmosphere which surrounds us. It is a serious 
problem in the true pedagogy : How shall we 
select, apply, and regulate the educating " con- 
ditions ?" And it is a question for the people 
rather than for the pedagogues to answer. 

First and foremost among the special educa- 
tional agencies, I place the church. And by the 
church, I mean the church of Jesus the Christ, 
which in simple and wise forms of worship and 
instruction, works by the Spirit which animated 
Him ; which Spirit He imparts to the individuals 
who thus possess the secret of His own character 
and life. I speak here of no ecclesiastical or 
dogmatic standards which are not embodied in 
the person, life, and work of Jesus Christ, and 
which are not found on the surface of the New 
Testament. 

The " assembly " of His followers for prayer, 
praise, preaching, the study of His Word, and 



A Stitdy in Pedagogy. 4 1 

the observance on occasion of the two simple 
forms of commemorative, symbolic and sacra- 
mental service He established, is the essence of 
the outward church. Men may add to these, but 
they are the substance. And every child should 
be brought into contact with this substance as a 
necessary part of his education. "The fear of 
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." There is 
a profound philosophy in that statement. Dr. 
Charles L. Dana, in a recent discussion of the 
question as to whether or not society would be 
justified in disposing of " certain defective, de- 
generate criminal and invalid classes " by the 
administration of carbonic acid baths, concludes 
with this most significant sentence : " Life is 
only worth saving because it represents some- 
thing more than mortality ; and only from this 
higher and spiritual standpoint can preventive 
and curative medicine in all its applications be 
justified." 

True education is founded in true religious 
faith. The mystery is no hindrance. The world 
is full of perplexing problems. Children begin 
life asking questions. They wonder at the won- 
ders about them ; and wonder more that no one 



42 A Study in Pedagogy. 

seems able to remove the mystery that invests 
every thing. Wise men break through outer 
shells to find new and harder problems within. 
The deeper down and the farther in they go, the 
more do questions multiply. Nature answers 
question by question. The earth, the air, the 
sky, the soul, the past, the present, the future, 
are covered with interrogation points. This is a 
world crowded with mystery. 

We see facts and forms, and we call them by 
certain names. We know them by their names 
and talk familiarly about them, as when we speak 
of "air," of "electricity," of "gravitation." We 
ascertain by observation and experiment certain 
ways or laws that these things have, and finding 
out what they have done before, or what has 
been done with them, we are able to lay our 
plans for their use. Depending upon the stead- 
iness of nature we project theories, and we work 
in harmony with these theories, as when we fly 
kites, build houses, insulate wires, and build up 
batteries of great power for sending sounds or 
other signals across vast distances. But beyond 
that we cannot go. We name and use these 
mysteries. That is all. When a child asks, 



A Study in Pedagogy. 43 

" What are air and electricity and gravitation ?" 
the wisest man must say, " I do not know." 
When the child asks, " How did they begin ?" the 
philosopher must answer, " I do not know." He 
does not know. He may trace heat and light 
and electricity back to motion — but the problem 
of motion is as hard as any he had before en- 
countered. Mystery — everywhere ! 

Both child and philosopher, however, make 
use of the forces they cannot comprehend. The 
boy cannot, to save his life, tell of the wind, 
whence it cometh, or whither it goeth, or what it 
is, and yet he gives his kite into its keeping, and 
lets out cord at the bidding of its pressure. He 
gets fun and exercise out of the mysterious force, 
and does not mope and scold because he cannot 
understand its source or nature or the final cause 
of its various phenomena. In the same way tele- 
graph companies invest millions of money, 
stretch wires, sink cables, and build offices, hav- 
ing perfect faith in a force about which they 
know but little. Men send messages day and 
night, over the land, under the sea, reckless as 
to cost, through men who handle the machinery 
which controls an energy which the machinery 



44 ^ Study in Pedagogy. 

itself could explain about as well as the men who 
manipulate it. The impenetrable mystery in- 
vesting a power does not prevent sensible men 
from using it if thereby they may get gain or do 
good. And this is highest wisdom. The work 
to be done is necessary to the order and pros- 
perity of society. The knowledge of the philos- 
ophy is not necessary. A message will go as 
certainly and as rapidly where electrical condi- 
tions are observed as if the operator could explain 
the prime cause and hidden secrets of the elec- 
trical agent. And what is true of the world of 
nature is true of the world of grace — that other 
realm of being, of observation, of experience, 
and of practical adaptations. We live in the 
body, sustaining certain relations to the visible 
world and performing certain acts which these 
relations require and make possible. The prob- 
lems do not deter us. The absolute uncertainty 
as to the causes and relations of things does not 
hinder us. So do we live in the spirit, sustaining 
certain relations to the invisible world, and we 
should in a wise way perform the acts which 
these relations require and make possible, the 
problem and the uncertainties not deterring or 



A Study in Pedagogy. 45 

hindering us. This is common sense in matters 
of religion. 

Let us, therefore, as educators, heed these 
practical counsels and teach them to our pupils : 
Acknowledge the first great Cause who created 
all things, even if we cannot find him. Reverence 
the great Providence who governs all things, even 
though he hides himself from our bodily vision. 
Trust and love the great Father of all men, even 
though we do not see his outstretched arms of in- 
vitation and welcome. Imitate the Spirit and life 
of Jesus Christ, even though we are perplexed to 
understand how he came to be born and how he 
wrought his great miracles or how he rose from 
the dead. Accept the inward impulses and lead- 
ings of the Holy Spirit as we study the Word of 
God, even though it be beyond our power to 
explain the existence of such invisible influence, 
or tell how the Scriptures were inspired. Pray 
with true desire for the real blessings of the 
spiritual world, although we be as ignorant of 
the processes of prayer as we are of telegraphy. 
Find the conditions, conform to them, and secure 
the results, even if all the causes be hidden in 
hopeless uncertainty. Let us have common 



46 A Study in Pedagogy. 

sense in matters of religion and spiritual life. 
And if we do not teach theology to our pupils, 
leaving that work to their parents and pastors, 
let our teaching in other lines always recognize 
the reality of the religious faculty in man, and 
the importance of its cultivation. 

Again, it is the church of Jesus Christ which 
exalts the doctrine of intrinsic soul value. And 
this recognition is at the basis of all educational 
work. Mathew Arnold says truly that "conduct 
is the end of life, and a man who works for 
conduct, therefore, works for more than a man 
who works for intelligence." It is the church of 
Jesus Christ which exalts the doctrihe of conduct, 
and of the true character which produces it. 
Tyndall says, that in response to the question 
as to how the Germans behaved in going into 
battle, a Prussian officer replied *' They exclaim, 
' Wir miissen unsere Pflicht thun ' " (We must do 
our duty). It is the church of Christ which 
exalts this essential element in conduct — absolute 
surrender to duty. It is the mission of the 
church to teach the spiritual value of man, the 
supreme value of conduct, and the root of con- 
duct — a character which is loyal to duty. 



A Study in Pedagogy. 47 

This spiritual and ethical teaching lies at the 
basis of all true education. Every individual 
soul needs the church in this simple and divine 
sense. In her human and hierarchical forms, in 
which sacraments and ceremonies are unduly and 
unwisely and absurdly emphasized, and made 
to mean what the Founder of the church never 
intended, there are so many puerilities and tyran- 
nies that we do not wonder at the repugnance 
and protests of men of common sense. It is not 
of this church in caricature and corruption that 
I speak ; but of the pure church with the Bible 
as its only authority, the Christ as its only Head, 
the believers — lay and clerical, who have the 
spirit of Christ, as constituting its only priest- 
hood, the building of genuine character for time 
and for eternity as its only mission. This church 
is the mightiest educational factor in the world. 
It recognizes man's real value and dignity. It 
rightly adjusts the multiplied activities and 
powers of the soul. It applies the true test for 
determining the relative values of all other edu- 
cating agencies. 

Children should be brought under the public 
and pastoral care of the church in the sanctuary, 



48 A Study in Pedagogy. 

the Sunday-school, and at the fireside. They 
should be required by parental authority to 
attend its solemn services, si-ng its songs, hear its 
ministers, study its one divine text-book, and 
enlist in its mission of divine worship and 
human help. They should go by compulsion 
until they go from a sense of duty and then 
until they find it a delight. 

What a great teacher a pastor may be ! He 
has the world of observation, history, and science 
to draw from in illustration of the world of grace. 
He may teach while he preaches. He may know 
and watch the day school which the children of 
his church attend. He may neutralize the apathy 
or the proper silence of secular teachers as to 
religious teaching, by his Sabbath-day instruc- 
tions. He may teach in and through his Sunday- 
school by means of superintendent, teachers, 
chorister, librarians, and platform speakers. He 
may make his church an institute of theology, of 
church history, biblical exposition, and Christian 
ethics for young and old. He may organize 
bible classes for all grades of his adult members 
and supplement the most direct and vigorous 
religious teaching by evening classes, in all 



A Study in Pedagogy. 49 

branches of learning, for those who want educa- 
tion but who cannot go to the schools to get it. 
He may organize popular lecture courses in his 
own church in science and in art, in history and 
political economy ; debating societies ; circles 
for home reading ; magazine clubs ; recreative 
evening classes ; and any number of useful 
devices which would tend to make his church a 
school. 

I am not especially anxious about religion in 
the day schools, that is in the way of formal teach- 
ing, if we can have good ethical and religious 
teaching through the church and the family. 
When Roman priests talk about the "godless 
schools " of America we well understand their 
meaning. We well know what they seek when in 
lachrymose tones they plead for the privilege of 
educating their "own children " in their " own 
way." We know what their " own way " is. Have 
they not had free opportunity for a thousand years 
in Italy to show what their own way is ? Is there 
a more ignorant, debased, idolatrous, and crim- 
inal population on the planet than the lower 
classes of Italy brought up under Romish con- 
trol ? What specimen has the Romish church to 



50 A Study in Pedagogy. 



offer in the line of popular education ? Are they 
to be found in south Ireland? In Portugal? 
French Canada? Spain? Mexico? South 
America ? Away with these sophistical assaults 
upon the public school system of our great 
republic ! 

In our day we are in danger of yielding to a 
prevailing good-nature which is hurt at the 
thought of saying anything against anybody. 
It is the weak mercy of the traditional grand- 
mother who is too kind to be just. It grows up 
with and increases indifference, both to truth 
and righteousness. It says, " O, well, never 
mind ; people will differ, and people will do this 
or that — never mind. It really makes no differ- 
ence what people believe." This is both a weak 
and a wicked way of looking at life. 

It does make a difference what people think 
and do. There is truth and there is error, and 
it makes a difference which you hold and pro- 
mote. There is right and there is wrong, and it 
makes a great difference which you practice. 
Between narrow and bitter personal antagonism, 
because of a difference of opinion, and the mod- 
ern "happy-go-lucky" carelessness about doc- 



A Study in Pedagogy- 5 1 

trine, there is a wise and golden niean, where, in 
loyalty to truth and charity toward all, all wise 
men stand. 

For every conceivable reason we should feel 
justified in doing all that we can against the 
insidious policies of that ancient and dangerous 
institution, the Church of Rome. It has in it, 
perhaps, as a system, less good and more evil, 
less truth and more error, than any other thing 
that bears the name of Christian. I say nothing 
against the humble people who have been vic- 
timized by the wily scheme. I suppose there are 
devout priests, as there may be deluded and 
honest bishops, in the Church of Rome. But we 
must not be deceived by a false charity until we 
find, too late, that the organization we have 
fostered has won what it aims at, namely, the 
balance of power in the republic. 

Withered be the hand that would interfere 
with the rights of a Romanist to worship whom 
he will, when he will, where he will, as he will ; 
but let us keep our eyes fixed on the history of 
the Church of Rome, the record she has made, 
the curse she has been to every nation on earth 
in which she has had supreme power, and the 



52 A Study in Pedagogy. 

blight which she has brought upon the common 
people everywhere. 

All honor to independent men who are more 
American than Romanist, and who, knowing 
better than we can know the danger from " the 
Church," are willing to defy the priest and sup- 
port the Nation. These men have no fault to 
find with the fidelity of wise patriots who know 
the peril of the plot and who have no smooth 
words with which to conciliate the plotters. 

The Roman Catholic church is afraid to have 
her children taught standard and trustworthy 
history. Hence her effort to keep them away 
from the public schools and her hypocritical 
objections as to the religious or non-religious 
public school system of America. 

If the church and the family are faithful, the 
school may be silent on religious subjects and 
yet will every child be religiously educated. 
The closing of the day school on Saturday and 
Sabbath is a monumental tribute to religion. 
The act calls attention to Saturday as a "holi- 
day " and Sabbath as a " holy-day." The silence 
of the public school and the closing of its doors 
on Sabbath is an imposing and eloquent reference 



A Study in Pedagogy. 53 



of the whole question to the church and to the 
home. The day school, even without a word of 
direct religious instruction, becomes a testing 
place of the work done at home and in the 
church. 

We need ot be afraid to excuse the day- 
school teacher from the use of the catechism or 
Bible, if we do our work well elsewhere. Re- 
ligious power will tell in railway car, shop, and 
market without a formal religious service. If 
the teacher lack religious faith, the formal teach- 
ing of Christianity will avail little. If he be filled 
with it, its power will be felt in a score of ways. 
Of course, where practicable, let us have relig- 
ious services in the day school. But where it is 
deemed best to omit them, do not let us lose 
heart. And, above all, we must not allow the 
Romanists through weak sophistries and bold 
misrepresentations to divide the public school 
funds, and thus destroy our system of education 
and our republican institutions. 

In connection with the church, and under 
certain conditions organically a part of it, is the 
home. Erasmus pleaded for more private 
schools. That is what the home should be. 



54 ^ Study in Pedagogy. 

Home is a school full of object lessons, setting 
forth in simple, comprehensible ways the wider 
world and the larger life. It should train chil- 
dren to self-respect, the habit of self-support, dig- 
nified views of life, and steadiness of purpose 
Home should constitute itself a right-hand helper 
of the public school. It should insist upon reg- 
ularity and punctuality of attendance, carefulness 
of preparation at home, and frequent reviews of 
lessons taught. 

Mother and father should follow the chil- 
dren into the field of literature and science where 
as students they wander, looking into their text- 
books, giving additional aid by conversation, 
questioning and readings. Mother especially 
should try to become acquainted with the general 
principles and method of teaching. She should 
know and observe a few of the simplest laws of 
teaching. For example : 

First. The law of desire^ which is so effective 
in binding a child to his books and his teachers. 
Curiosity may be excited. A sense of need may 
be awakened. Ambitionalsoministers to it. As 
Professor Cook of Harvard College says, " Every 
American boy cannot be President of the United 



A Study in Pedagogy. 55 



States, but if, as our English cousins assert, he 
believes that he can, the very belief makes him 
an abler man." Parents can do so much toward 
developing this craving of the conditions which 
create knowledge. 

Second. The law of resolve. The training of 
a very little child to the frequent exercise of 
will-power has more to do than most people sup- 
pose with success in study later on in the years 
of a boy's school life. 

Third. The law of defintte?iess and accuracy. 
And here home may do much nobler work by 
promoting every day observation of facts and by 
testing the child's knowledge to make sure that 
he really knows what he thinks that he knows. 
Professor Cook, whom I may quote once more, 
says that " success in the observation of phenom- 
ena implies three qualities at least, viz. : quick- 
ness and sharpness of perception, accuracy in 
details, and truthfulness." Home has opportu- 
nity to accomplish more in these lines than the 
school itself. 

Fourth. The law of moral conviction. It is a 
great thing to feel that truth is worth having for 
its own sake ; that knowledge gained but not 



56 A Study in Pedagogy. 

prized as truth is of little benefit ; that we should 
study for moral as much as for intellectual ends. 
It is here that mother's influence can most effect- 
ually be exerted, and many a man who has come 
to prize truth for truth's sake, owes this grace, 
which cannot be too highly estimated, to his 
own mother's words and life. 

Fifth. The law of philanthrophic ititent. We 
should know that we may help. Education may 
develop a species of pride and of self-righteous- 
ness. It may promote a spirit of caste and of 
exclusiveness. I have been pained to find among 
scholars of a certain class, an unwillingness to 
allow to the mass of the people larger education- 
al privileges. "It is not well to educate them 
above their business." " They cannot appreciate 
these things." "They will be less willing to 
serve, and less easy to be controlled." These are 
the reasons assigned by a few social and intellec- 
tual aristocrats of the day, for limiting the oppor- 
tunities of "the people," or for refusing to lend 
liberal aid in multiplying such opportunities. 
All such views are as unchristian as they are 
unrepublican. Every man has a right to be 
all that he has power to be, and every other man 



A Study in Pedagogy. 57 

is in duty bound to help, or at least not to hinder 
him in his effort. Our children should be edu- 
cated to sympathize with all men and to help all 
men. An education that lacks this spirit is one- 
sided and deficient. 

Into every cultivated home may be brought 
occasionally or regularly children of the public 
school who lack home help in their day school 
studies and who could be thus prepared for their 
recitation. Every teacher appreciates the advan- 
tage which those pupils whose parents are inter- 
ested in their school life, and who give them 
testing and training to supplement the profes- 
sional teacher's work. What if the children of 
poor and illiterate homes could have this very 
same help? What if the church should do the 
same work though voluntary teachers, going 
from house to house, or in a room of the church 
set apart for such gracious and holy purpose ? 

Sixth. T\i&\2i^ oi expression. Children should 
be taught to tell what they know. They should 
be trained from the beginning in the art of re- 
producing — of telling, by tongue, by crayon, 
by pen, by action — the things they have observed 
and acquired ; and this not in the ordinary 



58 A Study in Pedagogy. 

routine of examination. "Examination," says 
Mr. Huxley, " is an art, and a difficult one, which 
has to be learned like all other arts." Concern- 
ing its abuse in our system of education, he says 
that scholars "work to pass, and not to know ; 
and outraged science takes revenge. They do 
pass, and they don't know." Whatever the 
formal teacher may do in the school-room, parents 
at home may promote natural expression on the 
part of their children, by conversation, by letter 
writing, by drawing and painting, by recreative 
devices of various kinds. They may order the 
free conversation of the table and the fireside 
with educational intent. Collections of speci- 
mens in natural science, classifications of pictures, 
compositions on the common articles of daily 
use, — where they come from, how they are 
brought to us, or how they are made for us, what 
they cost, and who are the people whose services 
combine to place them within our reach — these 
and like methods would enable a family to 
accumulate useful knowledge, to take delight 
in observation and reading. A distinguished 
teacher of chemistry once said, " To arouse a 
love of study in any subject (I care not how sub- 



A Study in Pedagogy. 59 

ordinate its importance, or how limited its scope) 
is to take the first step toward making a man a 
scholar." 

The professional teacher need not be alarmed 
at this plea for the development of the teaching 
work of the home. Parents will never do that 
work so well as to be able to excuse the school- 
master. They may require better work at his 
hands, and be better able to judge of it and of 
him. The success of the physician depends on 
the co-operation of nurse, housekeeper, cook and 
children. The more they know and the more 
they can do, the more successfully will he be able 
to treat his patients. So will intelligent homes 
help intelligent teachers, and exalting the pro- 
fession render its services indispensable to the 
well-being of society. 

This brings me to another special agency — 
the school. Of it I may not speak at any great 
length. It must supplement the best work of 
the best parents, and be a substitute where pa- 
rental effort is lacking or defective. 

Its tasks must not be so easy as to require 
neither resolve nor effort, nor so difficult as to 



6o A Study in Pedagogy. 

paralyze with discouragement ; nor so general 
as to render concentration impracticable. 

It should teach the rudiments of knowledge 
so well and make them so familiar that they need 
never be formally reviewed in the later years. 

It should cause children to distinguish be- 
tween the mechanical processes of reading, wri- 
ting, ciphering, and those more important pro- 
cesses by which they acquire power to think, to 
reason, to accumulate, and to use information. 

It should ensure during the early years a 
broad view of the universe of truth, and cultivate 
in children a taste for knowledge which shall 
grow to be a hungering and a thirsting after it. 

It should establish habits of daily observation, 
the power of intellectual concentration, and tlie 
wisest use of language in the expression of one's 
ideas, desires and determinations. A great work 
is that of the school, and thrice blessed is the 
pupil whose teachers duly appreciate the power 
of their office. 

Of another special agency I must speak briefly. 
The press is one of the mightiest forces for good 
and for evil in this world. It contributes to 
every cause — good or evil. It furnishes arms for 



A Study in Pedagogy. 61 

friend and foe alike. The church, the home, 
and the school must learn to appreciate and 
to employ the press. Carlyle says, "All that a 
university or final highest school can do for us, 
is still but what the first school began doing — 
teach us to read." We are educated that we 
may be able to read ; that we may know what 
not to read ; what to read in haste and in frag- 
ments, and what to wade through with slow, 
deep, cautious, critical thought ; what to mark 
,for reading, and what to reproduce as seed in 
soil for one's own harvesting. 

Parents cannot keep their children from the 
knowledge of the evil that is in the world, but 
they can repudiate a daily paper that is filled 
with prurient reports of crime. They can and 
they should make such bold appeal and protest 
against filth and corruption, that editors will 
come to know that there is an element in society, 
the moral sentiment and courage of which they 
cannot afford to ignore. 

Bring books into the homes, the churches, and 
the schools — good books, wise books, immortal 
books, remembering their value as the " life- 
blood " of great spirits, and considering well the 



62 A Study in Pedagogy. 

words of Ruskin : " We may by good fortune 
obtain a glimpse of a great poet and hear the 
sound of his voice ; or put a question to a man 
of science, and be answered good-humoredly. 
We may intrude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet 
minister, or snatch, once or twice in our lives, 
the privilege of throwing a bouquet on the path 
of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of a 
queen. And meantime there is a society con- 
tinually open to us, of people who will talk to us 
as long as we like ; talk to us in the best words 
they can choose ; and this society, because it is 
so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept 
waiting round us all day long, not to grant 
audience, but to gain it, kings and statesmen 
lingering patiently in these plainly furnished and 
narrow ante-rooms, our book-case shelves, we 
make no account of that company, perhaps never 
listen to a word they would say all day long." 

The man who is ill sends for a physician, and 
then under his physician's direction, takes certain 
medicine and adopts a prescribed diet. This is 
not all. He has his window opened from time 
to time to let in the light and the fresh air. If 
possible he takes a journey for change of air and 



A Study in Pedagogy. 63 



of scenery. He regulates the permanent condi- 
tions and depends as much upon them as upon 
food and pliysic. He is wise thus to control the 
special, or direct, agencies and the equally 
important but incidental conditions. This two- 
fold work is equally necessary in the science and 
art of pedagogy. 

I have thus far in these pages tried to define 
the nature, end and process of education ; to 
indicate the educating conditions of our modern 
civilization ; to define the four leading educating 
agencies, — the church, the home, the school and 
the press ; and now I hope to show how both the 
" conditions " and " agencies " may be selected, 
applied and regulated. It was difficult to intro- 
duce these teaching factors without anticipating 
to some degree the more specific and practical 
counsels which properly belong to this branch of 
the treatment ; and I need not apologize for the 
didactic form which the final pages of necessity 
assume. 

If one live for " conduct," which according 
to Matthew Arnold, and according to Solomon 
also for that matter, "is the end of life," and for 
*' character," which is the only root that can vield 



64 A Study tn Pedagogy 



conduct worth producing, then everything of an 
external sort in life should be subordinated to 
this attainment and deportment. Wealth 
achieved by crime, or at the expense of " high 
thinking " and true living, is so much a loss and 
so much a curse to him who wins it, and to his 
children as well. Better, far better to be poor 
in property and rich in mental gain and spiritual 
character ; for this is the only enduring posses- 
sion. Assuming that these high educational 
aims have been adopted by my readers, I will 
turn Mentor and try to tell how parents may 
become teachers ; and how the church and the 
home may be great schools of training, preparing 
the way for the other schools and supplementing 
their more formal and elaborate methods. 

It is a good thing to choose a home with as 
much care as one chooses a school. Indeed the 
former is the more important choice. It is a 
great matter of surprise that so many people pre- 
fer the city to the country, or the great metropo- 
lis to a rural town. There are thousands of 
families crowded into the most limited and 
unwholesome quarters in great cities, who could 
live less expensively and far more comfortably 



A Study in Pedagogy. 65 

in a suburban neighborhood, where their chil- 
dren could have plenty of fresh air to breathe, 
and ample ground for frolic and for useful exer- 
cise. Even the residents on the great avenues 
are a wonder to me for the same reason. 
Whether in the city or the country, one should 
select a home for his children with an eye to 
their permanent good, rather than to present 
pleasure or future financial gain. Once in a 
while I meet a man whose residence is deter- 
mined by this educational idea. " It will be 
better for my children to live here," he says. 
He is determined to control the atmosphere. 

"Alas, alas," moans one poor soul, a mother, 
" I cannot go where I would, and here in thi:s 
squalid and confined neighborhood I must bring 
up my children. What good will your law of 
atmosphere do me and mine ?" 

Good woman, I have seen a lily grow in the 
mire. You may not go to the best and freshest, 
but much of the best and freshest you may bring 
to you and yours. The broom is a magic wand. 
It makes little folks fairies to wield it. Soap is 
so cheap, and water docs its work as well in an 
alley as on an avenue. You can have clean floors, 



66 A Shidy in Pedagoj^y. 

a clean door-step, whitewashed walls, vines that 
creep and flowers that bloom. Inexpensive 
appliances, a little tact and a good deal of indus- 
try, in which your children may be the principal 
actors, will make your badly located quarters a 
place of beauty and full of the influence that 
teaches without voice or tongue. Occasionally an 
evening or a holiday ramble into the nearest 
park or into the country will give air and exer- 
cise and chance for saying some things that will 
never be forgotten by those you love best. 

Another thing you can do. The church and 
the school are open to you and to your children. 
Sermons and lessons may be had for the going 
to the place in which they are given. You can 
send, or, better still, take Tom and Kate, and all 
the rest to the sanctuary and let them hear the 
preaching and join in the singing and bow rever- 
ently during the prayers. You can put them 
into Sunday-school and into day school, and by 
a little wisdom (which plenty of people nowadays 
are glad to supply you with) you can buy cheap 
books that are good books. Thus you may get 
all the great educational agencies at work on and 



A Study in Pedagogy. 67 



in behalf of your children. And your home life 
may add power to all of them. 

What is true of this poor woman and good 
for her children will be equally true and good in 
the case of the well-to-do and the " middle " class 
people. We may all unite in building up great 
enterprises religious, and educational, and at the 
same time make our homes helpers of these 
enterprises. 

When twenty families on a street keep clean 
sidewalks and put the street in order in front of 
their own houses, a work that amounts to a pub- 
lic benefaction has been well begun. The com- 
munity that rightly estimates the teaching power 
of "conditions" will have its "village improve- 
ment society" for the planting, training and 
trimming of trees, the setting in order of streets, 
the sweeping of sidewalks, the cultivating of 
public parks, the erection of monuments, and 
the following of true art in the erection of public 
buildings. 

How much one good well-kept hotel in a 
town will do toward improving the rest ! A 
display of taste in the show window of a shop 
will stir up to similar enterprise all the other 



68 A Study in Pedagogy. 



shop-keepers in the same line of business or in 
the same neighborhood. Shop windows are 
text-boolcs in art. A joint protest by the leading 
ladies of a town would cause the removal of 
corrupting pictures from the windows, and a 
similar effort would promptly induce the town 
authorities to prohibit the posting of show bills 
of an objectionable character. 

Combination, persistency, kindness, could in 
numberless instances develop an anti-saloon and 
possibly a prohibition spirit even among our 
foreign fellow-citizens, who have never seriously 
considered the question of the rum traffic from 
the American Christian point of view. In secur- 
ing such an end what an important educating 
"condition " would be promoted ! 

Before every other institution, and determin- 
ing its power for good, is the home. We start 
out with that when we talk about church and 
school. We come back to that again almost 
immediately. The strong cold wind cometh out 
of the north ; soft blow the breezes from the 
south ; but the all pervading atmospheres that 
bless or curse the community come from the 
homes of the community. 



A Study in Pedagogy. 69 



Would you help the church ? Begin with the 
home. Let authority send every member of the 
family to the sanctuary. Always speak of the 
church, its services, its pastor, its Sunday-school, 
with reverence and charity. Supplement sermons 
and lessons with home instruction. The best 
direct work of the church demands the perpetual 
influence of the home. 

Would you help the day school ? Begin with 
the home. In what way I have shown on the 
previous pages. 

Would you develop a well-balanced character 
and make your children truly refined and culti- 
vated men and women ? Begin with the home. 
Table manners, three times a day, on all the 
days, whether you have company or not, have 
educating power. Gladstone attributes his 
present vigor (he is over eighty) to the fact that 
he has practised a homely little hint which he 
heard in his boyhood, to the effect, that he should 
chew each mouthful of meat at least twenty-five 
times before he swallowed it. What a blessing 
if this rule were suddenly and permanently to 
go into operation in American homes. 

Politeness at the table, the right use of fork 



JO A Study hi Pedagogy. 

and napkin, the avoidance of all uncomfortable 
themes in conversation, the habit of cheerful 
talk and, at times, of hearty laughter, would 
promote digestion and help on the day's work 
and study. Criticism, fault-finding, worrying at 
meal time, have caused many a poor recitation 
in school and many a blunder in business. So 
much power lies in "conditions." 

Pleasant evenings at home, spent in recreative 
rest, are an education for society. There one is 
taught to talk and to listen, to play and to sing, 
to make others happy and to be made happy by 
others, which last is a great gift and a rare one. 
And what is all the education of the schools 
worth if one who has it, is not able with it to 
bless society and thus to brighten the lives of 
people ? 

In controlling the social educating force in the 
family, great discrimination and much independ 
ence are necessary. Bad people, although accom- 
plished and attractive, are dangerous. Frivolous 
people are almost as harmful. They weaken the 
self-respect of those who entertain them and set 
a pernicious example before children. Better 
let the parlor be cold and dark than occupied by 



A Study in Pedagogy. Ji 



other than people of heart and character. After 
this condition is met, the more brains and the 
more taste the better. 

It is important in the work of education, 
wheresoever and by whomsoever carried on, to 
give freedom to the pupil. He must be let atone a 
great deal. Too much reining in is bad for him. 
Bring the law to bear on him at stated times and 
then let it bear with full pressure. But give him 
a colt's freedom. If he gets soiled hands and 
muddy boots and trousers "not fit to be seen," 
let him come home to a hearty " Glad to see you 
my boy." A boy who does not soil fingers, boots 
and trousers now and then, is not " of much 
account " as we Americans say. When you find 
him in the midst of his muddy exploits cheer 
him on with a sympathetic " Isn't that fun ?" 
But when the time comes for the end of his play, 
see that it ends promptly and that the washing 
up is thoroughly done, so that he may learn the 
relations between restraint and freedom, and 
cheerfully submit to the one because he finds 
such unqualified delight in the other. 

We should somehow secure the occasional 
coming together of all those whose special 



72 A Study in Pedagogy. 

responsibility is to give direct instructions and 
control social conditions. I have in mind a semi- 
annual meeting in a small town or city of all the 
school teachers, pastors, editors, and city mayor 
and council to discuss in a frank way some of 
the educational topics. Political and denomina- 
tional complications would arise, local prejudice 
would sometimes be excited, but I believe that 
on the whole great good would be the result. 

This then is the problem of pedagogy : How 
make life in all its parts, through all its agencies, 
and under all of its conditions a unity tending 
toward the education of the whole people ? 
The school has power but its power is slight 
unless it co-operates with other educating forces. 
And these other forces are all about us. 

A young barrister once said to the great 
Mason, " I keep my room to read law." Mason 
answered : " Read law ! It is in the court room 
you must read law." Bulwer Lytton somewhere 
says practically the same thing : " A man on the 
whole is a better preceptor than a book." 

Let us have books and teachers and schools, 
but let us have churches and homes, a pure jour- 



A Study in Pedagogy. jt, 



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